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Suppose you cause it to be falsely reported that you have died, and your purpose is only to see your enemies gloating over your demise at your funeral and then being disappointed to learn that you are alive. During the rite, you sit up in your coffin and sing an aria. (Suppose the aria is not subject to copyright.)

Would there be legal consequences?

(A character in a certain novel claimed to have done this. I think he said the aria was from the opera Jesse James. I don't think that opera exists in reality.)

Graeme Rock
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Michael Hardy
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  • Would the answer be different if the aria were under copyright? There is a country-and-western rock opera/concept album called The Legend of Jesse James; while I wouldn't normally call a song from such a work an "aria," could this be what the novelist intended? – phoog Oct 13 '16 at 19:30
  • @phoog : The novel was Glory Road by Robert Heinlein, published in about 1965. It could be viewed as an early anti-Vietnam-war thing, although I don't think that was its main point. Oscar, the protagonist, organizes his whole life around the goal of not getting sent to Vietnam. After he is wounded in combat in Vietnam and discharged, he no longer has a central purpose in life, and then he meets a beautiful woman who needs to hire a "hero" to go with her to Nevia and slay dragons with a sword and capture the Egg of the Phoenix. A man named Rufo makes that claim about faking his own death. – Michael Hardy Oct 13 '16 at 21:13
  • @phoog : As to the name of the opera, I'm not sure I recall it correctly. – Michael Hardy Oct 13 '16 at 21:14
  • @phoog : And as for copyright: In the U.S.A. an exclusive right to public performance belongs to the copyright owner. (Along with a right to make copies, a right to publicly distribute them, a right to prepare derivative works (e.g. translations into other languages, or movies based on a copyrighted book), and the right of public display. (But my information may not be up to date.) – Michael Hardy Oct 13 '16 at 21:16
  • You may want to tag this for copyright and opera, if I get the gist of the comments. As for legal issues, who did you report this to, or cause this to be reported to? Did they rely on that information in forming a contract, or acting on an existing contract? Do you have a fiduciary duty to the reportee? – user6726 Oct 13 '16 at 21:46
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    @user6726 : I specified that the aria is not subject to copyright in order to keep it away from copyright issues. I suspect any questions about copyrights are unaltered by the faking of the death. – Michael Hardy Oct 13 '16 at 21:51
  • @user6726 : I imagine something like a death notice in a newspaper, and maybe similar notices in public places addressed to whom it may concern. – Michael Hardy Oct 13 '16 at 21:54
  • The newspaper could sue you. They often require advance verification from a funeral home or crematorium, to avoid pranking. – user6726 Oct 13 '16 at 22:15
  • @user6726 : I think I had in mind the consequences of the mere fact that you caused such a report to be publicly circulated, and your subsequent behavior, rather than the consequences of some particular method of causing it to be circulated. – Michael Hardy Oct 14 '16 at 00:14
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    As long as you've done no wrong to the publishers of the report, there's no law requiring you to generally disseminate just the truth. You could make a political statement, be sarcastic, be a jerk, or whatever your motive might be. It's only in certain legal interactions that you have to be truthful. – user6726 Oct 14 '16 at 00:27
  • Related: http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/58517/what-happens-if-a-person-with-life-insurance-goes-missing-and-is-found-many-year – user662852 Oct 14 '16 at 02:47
  • Which jurisdication are you asking for? (Laws are different in Germany then the US) – Angelo Fuchs Oct 14 '16 at 07:29
  • @AngeloFuchs : Any jurisdiction for which an interesting answer can be posted. – Michael Hardy Oct 17 '16 at 17:21
  • @MichaelHardy That makes this question very broad. There are at least 5 bases for law systems See this map and the laws concerning this topic are different among similar ones as well (e.G. German and Austrian law would handle this differently) Please, do narrow it down. – Angelo Fuchs Oct 18 '16 at 07:49
  • @AngeloFuchs : The fact that there is some legal system that has some well defined way of dealing with this is in itself interesting. – Michael Hardy Oct 18 '16 at 16:19
  • ok, Let's go with this: Legal systems that evolved from that of England. – Michael Hardy Oct 18 '16 at 16:20
  • Some people have woken up during their funerals or a the funeral home after having been declared dead. Vince McMahon was "assassinated". If OP is Trump, I guess I would feel let down, but probably not illegal. – emory Jul 31 '18 at 17:00

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I'll use Wisconsin as a jurisdiction.

If you file a false death certificate, that's a felony. But you probably wouldn't go that far.

It could be disorderly conduct. In Wisconsin disorderly conduct is described as follows:

Whoever, in a public or private place, engages in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud or otherwise disorderly conduct under circumstances in which the conduct tends to cause or provoke a disturbance is guilty of a Class B misdemeanor.

There's also a statute prohibiting "Disrupting a funeral or memorial service" but it won't apply in this case unless disorderly conduct applies. It would raise the penalty to a class A misdemeanor (or a class I felony if you somehow did it again after being convicted once.)

On the civil side, there could be an action for intentional infliction of emotional distress, either for the false report of your death, or for a "corpse" suddenly coming to life. This kind of lawsuit requires "extreme and outrageous conduct", but if this isn't, I don't know what would be.

D M
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  • On the other hand: is a funeral legally still a funeral if the deceased is found to no longer be deceased? – Graeme Rock Jan 16 '21 at 07:46
  • @GraemeRock The statute says "“Funeral or memorial service" ... does not include a service that is not intended to honor or commemorate one or more specific decedents." It was intended that it would commemorate a specific decedent, however, the decedent isn't really a decedent. I don't know how the courts would interpret this. – D M Jan 17 '21 at 18:45
  • I remember a movie where a very pleasant dead man's very pleasant friends appeared at the funeral and each stuck a needle into him to make sure he was indeed dead :-) Could they be charged with assault if he was alive? – gnasher729 Nov 28 '22 at 10:13
  • @gnasher729 Probably depends on whether they actually expected a fake death. And after the first few people stuck a needle in and there was no reaction, it would be rather difficult to prove beyond a reasonable that the remaining people actually thought he might be alive. – D M Nov 28 '22 at 22:30